I see a number of legal issues around assessments. Some assessments are designed to give insight into personality or leadership styles. Those are fine. Others, like the MMPI, are designed to identify pathology. These raise a host of problems.

There are many potential ethical problems in mission for psychologists with professional licenses. And if you get caught up in these ethical problems, you may do real harm to people, you may be liable for malpractice, and you could lose your professional license.

Requiring an employee to undergo psychological counseling may violate Americans with Disabilities Act as previously discussed in Part 1 and Part 2. The Sixth Circuit just issued another opinion in favor of the ambulance driver, Kroll. The Sixth Circuit was not too happy with Kroll’s employer. How can you demonstrate that counseling is “job-related and consistent with business necessity”?

It’s tempting for a mission just to refuse someone who has a mental or physical disability. But consider, should the Church be sending the message that we don’t value persons with disabilities? Also, there may well be legal problems with this approach.

Brent has discussed formal and informal assessments. Informal assessments are probably okay, as long as you don’t ask the “forbidden” questions that would trigger discrimination concerns. I want to dwell a bit more on the formal assessments, and how they might cause concern from a legal standpoint.

When we think of testing in personnel selection and missions, the first thing that often comes to mind is the issue of particular kinds of tests. I want to take a step back and look at the bigger world of assessment as opposed to the smaller world of testing.

Brent, I think it’s a great idea to sort out this idea of psychological testing. While those tests are not needed for most secular jobs, many mission agencies use assessments initially for two reasons. That raises an important distinction between types of tests.

Hi, Brent. Social networking is the new way we participate in community, so many of the things we once shared at the village well or at prayer meetings are now shared online. That can be good and it can cause problems, just like old-time gossip. And social media definitely causes its share of employment problems.

Thanks, Theresa. I feel much better. The nice thing about social networking, more so than prayer sharing, is that there is usually a track, which can be reviewed. I have the following questions about the social network.

Brent, I agree your problem with GINA is now way bigger. In fact, you have defined a problem that pulls in HIPAA (because of confidential medical information) and the ADA (to the extent the person has a disability) as well!

Attorney Advertising D I S C L A I M E RP R I V A C Y P O L I C Y Because of the generality of the information on this site, it may not apply to a given place, time, or set of facts. It is not intended to be legal advice, and should not be acted upon without specific legal advice based on particular situations.